FreeBSD Developer Summit, May, 2008

This page describes the May 2008 FreeBSD Developer Summit, colocated with BSDCan 2008 taking place in Ottawa, Canada. This is a by-invitation event. FreeBSD committers are welcome to register themselves using this wiki, but non-committers must be sponsored by a committer to attend.

This event is loosely modeled on last year's 200705DevSummit, with some format changes to take into account better venue, a desire for more general hacking, etc. We anticipate the daily schedule remaining flexible, so please do not make travel plans expecting that things will remain at any particular time on any particular day of the summit. We highly encourage attendees to also attend BSDCan 2008.

The information on this page is subject to change; please check back for updates.

Sponsors

Our annual BSDCan developer summit would not be possible without the generous support of sponsors.

The FreeBSD Foundation is organizing the summits and covering venue costs (room, AV, networking). The Foundation also offers travel grants to help cover travel costs for developers. We would prefer developers look to their employer first so that we can make this funding stretch as far as possible.

BSDCan provides logistical support, including organizing rooms for the event and for developers to stay in. BSDCan also covers board and travel for all BSDCan speakers. FreeBSD developers can help support the summit by speaking at BSDCan! You can also help support BSDCan and the developer summit by encouraging people to attend the conference, and especially to attend tutorials.

We are looking for additional sponsors to cover meals, especially catered lunches during the developer summit. Does your company use FreeBSD and want to help support the great development work? Buying lunch for 70+ starving developers and getting a chance to talk to them about what you do with FreeBSD is a great way to get your name your name out, not to mention keep their attention :-).

Schedule

The FreeBSD developer summit takes place on the 14th and 15th of May, on the same days as the BSDCan tutorials (sorry!). Many developers will arrive on the night of the 13th and meet for dinner and drinks before things kick off. Most developers will stay on through BSDCan to give and attend talks. It is an excellent conference--a good FreeBSD developer showing has countless benefits, not least the opportunity to tell the world what we're doing.

Rough Schedule

We have rearranged the schedule since last year to have more open hacking time, which is more feasible with some talks offloaded onto the front end of BSDCan. Here's the current general plan:

Day

Morning

Lunch

Afternoon

Dinner

Evening

13th

Dinner and drinks at the Royal Oak

14th

devsummit mini-talks

-

topic hacking

Take-in Thai in FreeBSD Lounge

FreeBSD Lounge

15th

devsummit mini-talks

-

topic hacking

Dinner at Haveli

FreeBSD Lounge

16th BSDCan

BSDCan

FreeBSD Lounge

17th BSDCan

BSDCan

FreeBSD Lounge

18th BSDCan

Breakfast at Cora's

followed by tourist things

Detailed Schedule

Morning sessions are held in a lecture hall able to seat 70-80 and with AV equipment. Afternoon sessions are held in one of two nearby rooms able to seat 30-40, and may not have AV equipment. As such, morning sessions are short(ish) talks, and afternoon sessions are BoFs.

Please arrive by 9:30am for the morning sessions so that we can get started around 10:00am.

Please add additional BoF topics here and below -- it's up to you to figure out how to keep busy during the afternoons, and a bit of planning ahead will allow people to think about the topics you want to discuss in advance!

Topic Sessions and Topic Hacking

These sessions are intended to get developers with common areas of interest or specific projects in mind together for collaboration and hacking. They might involve prepared presentations, structured code reading, or a notebook-assisted whiteboard session. Advance preparation for such events is critical so everyone comes to the table with the right reading done so you can get to the meat of the matter.

There is a good contender for an improved USB stack currently in p4. This session will be to talk about the techncial merits of this stack and device. Please register interest with Warner, and he'll either arrange an after hours session during BSDcan proper.

As a result of the last 2 Bugathons, we now have lots of new volunteers, new ideas, and some new PR reports. These are enough to give us an idea of how we make dealing with PRs much easier than we have in the past.

Talk Descriptions

Just high level ideas for now. Tell us about your latest project, brainstorm on solutions to a hard problem, train us to use a new tool, make observations about a FreeBSD development process and how to improve it, tell us how your company uses FreeBSD, or coordinate activities.

A look at how to use a few simple tools to debug subtle TCP issues in FreeBSD. Will also cover some problem case studies uncovered over the past year.

Attendees

In order to attend, you must register in advance; this allows us to size rooms, order food, provide beverages, and make dinner reservations. We appreciate your cooperation in letting us know your plans well in advance of the event. Non-committers must be sponsored by a committer in order to attend.

Travel Information

As this event is colocated with BSDCan 2008, all information on the BSDCan web page should apply. Here are some suggestions that may make planning easier:

Arrival date

13th May 2008

Departure date

18th May 2008

Travel method

If traveling from outside Ottawa, fly into Ottawa's international airport (YOW), possibly transferring in Toronto (YYZ). Air Canada partners with United Airlines, and has direct flights from many US cities and London Heathrow (LHR) into Ottawa.

Visas

Many attendees will be able to use the Visa Waiver program, but check before traveling. If you need a formal invitation letter (never hurts), let us know.

Where to stay

Stay in the university residence halls, or if you really want a hotel, Les Suites. The university residence has two-person suites with private bedrooms but a shared bathroom and kitchenette, and is both clean and comfortable, as well as on-site for the summit.

Remember that you must separately register for BSDCan; visit the BSDCan web page for details.

Information on Prior Developer Summits

Information on some other recent developer summits:

DevSummit is the page for the EuroBSDCon 2005 developer summit, which took place in November, 2005.

200605DevSummit is the page for the BSDCan 2006 developer summit, which took place in May, 2006.